Grimes screen print

I think the colours came out well for this and while cropping took a long time, the edges are a lot tidier than the last prints. I've realised from this though that the registration needs to be pretty perfect if I have text in front of two different bitmapped colours in order to ensure maximum legibility. 

War Horse tests

Not worrying about the colour palette yet, but I think these are a step in the right direction to making the image more graphic. The dotty one on the right is looking most attractive if I can combine it with tight brush work. I also think highlighting with the colour of the sky is working really well. This is helping to push the values of the image further and give it the contrast it needed

The image on the left is a composite of two sheets of tracing paper, one with line work and the other with pencil tone. I thought the pencil tone created an interesting texture but the effect is not pronounced enough. Might need work

With brush pen:

Plus a few areas of solid black for contrast

Some notes from screen printing

I've printed 2/3 colours for Grimes. This is the first print that I am doing on A1 paper in order to crop down.

I think that my registration has been better thanks to being able to use not only the design itself, but the registration marks on the side, to align the prints. Unfortunately the crop marks didn't come out too well so cropping will be another issue, but shouldn't detract from the prints too much.

The colour mixing also went really well; using a few squeezes of fluorescent ink has helped the colours pop more. It may not be appropriate for every poster, but certainly worked for kooky Grimes. Mike said that in general, you should print the lighter colours first and work your way to the darker ones, but if the image is bitmapped, the colours should blend together similarly regardless.

While the colours were mixed well, I'm beginning to notice the splotchiness of the ink more and more as Fred pointed out in the crit. This is definitely due to the quality of the paper I am using. I'm just using cartridge paper from the studio, but maybe I should invest in doing at least one print per run on nicer stock like somerset, or just other cartridge with a higher GSM.

Advice from Patrick

Re-evaluate where War Horse images are going - they are at risk of seeming to patronising at the moment as they are not saying unique that the text isn't already. Look at graphic industrial aesthetic of the early 20th century. Re-think colour palette.

I quite like the look of this image:

Perhaps this aesthetic could be my starting point.

First rough for War Horse

 

This is a rough drawing of my selected thumbnail for chapter two.
While the war hasn't broken out yet at this point, the colour palette seems a bit too bright and fun so I'll need to alter it to make it a bit more sombre. I'm pretty pleased with the composition otherwise though.

I'm trying to keep in mind what Victo Ngai said about an image's quality being measured by how successful it is in black and white too. The image isn't too bad and Joey the horse stands out which is good, but I'm not sure the range of values is great enough; it might need more darks to bring it out.

possible alt colour

War Horse - potential scene list and thumb nailing

This is a list of moments in the book which stood out to me whilst reading as scenes that would be worth illustrating:

• Ch.2 - Albert's father with a whippy stick
• Ch.2 - First morning of horse ploughing
• Ch.3 - Riding to check the sheep
• Ch.4 - Horse getting sold
• Ch.5 - Horse getting drawn
• Ch.8 - Leaping over barbed wire
• Ch.12 - Weakening horses
• Ch.14 - Topthorn dies
• Ch.15 - Tanks in battle
• Ch.15 - Horse resting in mud in No Man's Land
• Ch.16 - White flag raised
• Ch.16 - Coin toss for horse
• Ch.20 - Grandpa selling horse to Albert

Thumb nailing Ch.2 - First morning of horse ploughing:

 

Thumbnailing Ch.3 - Riding to check sheep:

I'm taking Ben's advice of using a limited colour palette, but I think it would be appropriate to change it for each illustration, as the tone could be different throughout - this is early in the book where it is still just about the farm. I'm also consulting Andrew Loomis' Creative Illustration for ideas for dynamic compositions. I might go with illustrating chapter two as the compositions have more opportunity for dynamism I think.

Ch. 8 - jumping over barbed wire

More sombre colour palette. I think the top left and bottom right ones are the most interesting as they offer a more dynamic view of the horse. I'm leaning toward the top left

http://www.colourlovers.com Palette site

Some nice horse drawings

Found these small uncredited images of horses in an article about horse safety. Thought the conservative brush technique might be worth taking on board when drawing for War Horse

OUIL603 crit

Main points to take:

• It's good that the three completed screen prints so far show different approaches to the process - stock, colour number and bitmapping, but the screen printed posters brief needs to show how much I've learnt from these and how I'm improving. Document this, and go back to some of these later down the line to see how much better I've become at them.

• My colours can come out really splotchy and this looks bad.

• From hearing others being given advice on size and format, I decided to have a look at what most posters are generally printed at, and it's usually 18"x24". This is bigger than A2 which I didn't want to have to deal with at first, but maybe it would be for the best in order to standardise my designs with the real world a bit. Sonnenzimmer sell their posters at this size as well.

The next poster I design, I'll try and adhere to 18"x24" and will also print on A1 stock to trim down.
Learning in action

Massive Attack printed

Although the concept is still pretty weak, I feel a lot better about this image now that it's been printed.

Thanks to the messy nature of the bitmapped ink, errors in printing were less noticeable with this design  than with the previous ones. 

However, this is definitely the last print which I print directly onto A2 paper with, as lining the image up against the edge of the sheet is impractical and unreliable. 

The next print will be done on A1 and cropped down, which is what I should have been doing from the beginning really.

War Horse thumbnails

I've begun to make imagery for War Horse by thumb nailing a cover. I like the motif of the barbed wire, especially because there's quite an emotive scene where war horse jumps over some.

I have a list of scenes I think have potential to be illustrated - one of which involves a German and a British soldier settling who gets to keep war horse so I did a really rough sketch of what it could look like. I know that to fit Folio Society's standards, the drawing will have to be incredibly tight.

I went the E.H Shepherd exhibition at the House of Illustration in London for inspiration before tackling the brief.

Grimes poster

I fell behind with the designing of Massive Attack's poster and should've been screen printing it this week. I figure to make catching up easier on myself, I'll just have both Massive Attack and Grimes designed within this two week period, and print them both over the next two week period.

I don't think I've ever done a 3-colour screen print, so this will be a bit more of a challenge than the previous posters but I'm happy with how it's turned out. I'm finding these screen printed posters really inspiring in terms of colour and ambition: http://sonnenzimmer.com/#!/page/26 

next potential pster http://www.villageunderground.co.uk/events/fatima-yamaha

Massive Attack poster

insert thumbnails here

Massive Attack don't have too established an image and haven't even used their fire logo on a release in quite a long time. The idea behind having the text all on a guy's body is to show that the show is such a big deal that it's worth having tattooed, though I admit it's not the most exciting image. I'll have to roll with it due to time constraints.

This is the final poster design:

In the end I decided to create some washy inky textures to bitmap into the background, which I think helps with the balance of the image. I also want to print it onto grey stock in order to alleviate some of the problems I had with the empty white space while designing it.

War Horse

research
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/columnists/article-492582/Forgotten-Heroes-A-million-horses-sent-fight-Great-War--62-000-came-back.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zp6bjxs

not folio style, but some nice book covers http://typeasimage.com/greatjourneys.html